Performance-scalable computational approach to main-subject detection in photographs

Jiebo Luo; Stephen P. Etz; Amit Singhal; Robert T. Gray

doi:10.1117/12.429521

8 June 2001 Performance-scalable computational approach to main-subject detection in photographs

Jiebo Luo, Stephen P. Etz, Amit Singhal, Robert T. Gray

Proceedings Volume 4299, Human Vision and Electronic Imaging VI; (2001) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.429521
Event: Photonics West 2001 - Electronic Imaging, 2001, San Jose, CA, United States

Abstract

We present a computational approach to main subject detection, which provides a measure of saliency or importance for different regions that are associated with different subjects in an image with unconstrained scene content. It is built primarily upon selected image semantics, with low-level vision feature also contributing to the decision. The algorithm consists of region segmentation, perceptual grouping, feature extraction, and probabilistic reasoning. To accommodate the inherent ambiguity in the problem as reflected by the ground truth, we have developed a novel training mechanism for Bayes nets- based on fractional frequency counting. Using a set of images spanning the 'photo space', experimental results have shown the promise of our approach in that most of the regions that independent observers ranked as the main subject are also labeled as such by our system. In addition, our approach lends itself to performance scalable configurations within the Bayes net-based framework. Different applications have different degrees of tolerance to performance degradation and sped aggravation; computing a full set of features may be not practical for time- critical applications. We have designed the algorithm to run under three configurations, without reorganization or retraining of the network.

Citation Download Citation

Jiebo Luo, Stephen P. Etz, Amit Singhal, and Robert T. Gray "Performance-scalable computational approach to main-subject detection in photographs", Proc. SPIE 4299, Human Vision and Electronic Imaging VI, (8 June 2001); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.429521

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